Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Genesis Housing Development Corporation in participating in the‪#‎77ProudCommunity Resource Fair this Saturday at King College Prep H.S. 4445 S. Drexel Blvd. from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm. We are also conducting the FREE "Foundations of Money Management" workshop and it's not too late to register! Click on the link:http://moneymanagementfair2016.eventbrite.com/

This application is for students seeking an undergraduate degree. Applicants should be an accepted student at an accredited institution of higher learning to include community colleges, private institutions and certified vocational training programs.

To help make homeownership possible for a broad range of working families, the Chicago Infrastructure Trust, chaired by Treasurer Kurt Summers, partnered with the City of Chicago to established the Home Buyer Assistance Program. The Program will offer grants to eligible home buyers and borrowers to support down payment and closing costs. The Chicago Infrastructure Trust will administer the program, working in conjunction with authorized lending institutions responsible for accepting and processing applications. The Home Buyer Assistance Program is open to families or individuals who are buying a home or refinancing an existing mortgage.

For More Information Click Here To Sign Up

Become a Chicago-Area Electrician!!

Men and Women, Do You Want to Earn $42 Per Hour? Do You Want A Career with a Long, Positive Future? Are You Willing to Work Hard and to Learn? Do You Want Wonderful Benefits?

If So, Call The Black Star Project to

Become

A Chicago-Area ELECTRICIAN!

You must be interviewed, have a valid driver's license, be drugfree, have proof of citizenship, have a social security card, be at least 17 years old, pass a basic skills and academic test, be in good physical shape, clear a background check, and a have a letter of recommendation.

Congressman Bobby Rush's Annual Congressional Art Competition which gives high school students in his District, the chance to win two round-trip tickets to D.C. and have an art piece, they created, displayed in the U.S. Capitol building for a year. This competition seeks to encourage, engage and recognize high school students who use the arts as a tool to express themselves. Students in 7th through 12th grade are eligible to participate.

Students' submissions can be presented as paintings, drawings, prints, mixed media, computer-generated art, photography, or a collage. Please closely follow the guidelines to ensure a student's entry is not disqualified. All entries are due by Wednesday, April 27, 2016 to the Chicago or Midlothian Office. A panel of qualified individuals will review the entries and select the winner.

To confirm your participation or if you have any questions, please contact Dennis Hawkins in in his office at (773) 224-6500 or by e-mail at dennis.hawkins@mail.house. gov.

The City of Chicago FREE Tax Service Program

If you are a family earning up to $50,000

or an individual earning up to $25,000, you may be eligible to take advantage of this FREE service and find out if you qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit(EITC), Child Tax Credit(CTC), and/or student financial aid of college!

Get FREE, confidential tax help at locations across Chicago from nowthrough mid-April.

CONFERENCE OF WOMEN LEGISLATORS

2016-17 SCHOLARSHIP AWARD PROGRAM!

The Conference of Women Legislators (COWL) a not-for-profit organization and a bipartisan coalition of women legislators in the Illinois General Assembly, announce their 2016-2017 Scholarship Award Program. COWL created the scholarship program as part of its mission to promote economic independence, community service and leadership development.

Rep. Willis, the Chair of the Scholarship Committee, announces that scholarships of $2500 each will be awarded. These college scholarships are aimed at helping women who are earning their college degrees, later in life in some cases.

Scholarship applicants are required to enroll in an Illinois accredited college or university for a minimum of six credit hours to qualify, making the scholarships available to a part-time student. In addition to academic achievement the scholarship committee also considered volunteer or paid community service work that benefited women in transition. Applications must be postmarked by April 15, 2016. Awardees will be notified of the decisions by May 31, 2016. Scholarship applications may be downloaded from the COWL website at www.cowlil.com

For Small Businesses interested in participating in the Chicago area program, here's the registration link:

You can save hundreds to more than $1,000 a year on commuting costs through payroll tax savings when you participate in a pre-tax transit benefit plan at work. You'll save money while enjoying a stressfree commute with Metra! For customers who use a Monthly Pass, participating in a pre-tax transit benefit plan is like getting three months of free Metra tickets each year!

EMPLOYERS

Thanks to a late 2015 Congressional action, you can now offer your employees as much as $255.00 per month in pre-tax transit benefits. Their tax savings is like offering them a raise, without costing you!* Amounts for each employee will vary depending on their actual transit costs. Click Here For More Info

Black Gang Members across America Are Asked to Join with Local Organizing Committees to Cleans Up Black America

38 Cities Have Signed Up to Change Conditions of Black America

Chicago, Illinois-

Black gang members across America are being asked to lay down their weapons and their illegal activities for at least one day and to help clean up Black America. In many Black communities, street gangs are one of the strongest institutions in the community. On April 16, 2016, thousands of Black Americans in at least 38 cities will join the Red, Black, Clean and Green day sponsored by Chicago's Justice Or Else Local Organizing Committee, with support from the War on Filth and Fear and The Black Star Project.

In Chicago, a few of the gang members that clean-up will be paid a small stipend. Last year, Chicago Police spent $116 million on overtime. A fraction of that money for overtime could have been used for a jobs' program for gang members to clean up their communities and to make our city safer during a summer jobs' program. A University of Chicago study says that each gunshot wound in Chicago (about 2,600 last year) cost the city $1 million each or about $2.6 billion total. A year round jobs program for 10,000 gang members cleaning up the city would only cost $20,000 per year per gang member or would only cost $200 million per year, less than 1/10 of what we are currently paying for gang violence and violence reduction.

Activities during the Red, Black, Clean and Green clean-up day include:

Picking up paper and trash

Cleaning streets and alleys

Cleaning vacant lots

Cleaning away graffiti

Cleansing the spirits of our children

Planting flowers, vegetable garden, trees and grass

Reporting dangerous and open abandoned houses

Reporting abandoned cars and trucks

Painting fences and street poles

Establishing block clubs

Saying "Hello" to neighbors, other Black Americans and other Americans

There are more than 100 Justice Or Else Local Organizing Committees across America, which are an outgrowth of the Justice or Else Million Man March. Men returning from the Million Man March were charged with getting into actions cleaning, saving and protecting their communities. The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan has said, "Look, men! We must make our community decent for our women, children and the elderly. We can do it better than the police. If we clean up our communities, we will be able to walk the streets in peace and security."

Sel Dunlap, General Manager of the Campaign on Filth and Fear says, "We're saying Red, Black, Clean and Green because our purpose is to encourage a sense of responsibility to self, family, the community. The effort isn't solely about picking up paper and trash, it is also to plant the seeds of transformation in our people. We don't have to tolerate the filth and fear that is crippling our spirit. The cleansing starts from the inside out."

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Please call 773.285.9600 for more information or to register your city and community for Red, Black, Clean and Green orClick Here to register your community and your city for this campaign.

(New York City, Chicago, Miami-Dade County, and Houston schools all employ more security staff than counselors)

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Exclusive: Data Shows 3 of the 5 Biggest School Districts Hire More Security Officers Than Counselors

Counselors vs. Security

Number of staff members per 1,000 students in the New York City, Chicago, Miami-Dade and Houston

City Security Staff Counselors

New York City 5.28 2.90

Chicago 4.21 2.18

Miami-Dade 6.32 2.80

Houston 1.27 0.85

Policeman "counsels" girl on behavior.

By Matt Barnum

March 27, 2016

Many of America's biggest school districts have prioritized security officers over counselors. In Houston, that means there's only one counselor for every 1,175 students

School security officers outnumber counselors in four out of the 10 largest public school districts in the country - including three of the top five - according to data obtained by The 74.

New York City, Chicago, Miami-Dade County, and Houston schools all employ more security staff than counselors. New York City, Chicago and Miami-Dade are all among the nation's five biggest school districts.

Not one of the top 10 districts, where counselors may be particularly beneficial for low-income students, meets the American School Counselor Association's recommendation of one counselor for every 250 students - most weren't even close. The nearest to the standard was Hawaii with 274 students for every counselor.

The 74's analysis comes as the debate over school safety, classroom violence and the school-to-prison pipeline continues to dominate national headlines and inform federal policy.

"I'm not surprised, but it still concerns me really deeply," Dennis Parker, director of the ACLU's racial justice programs, said of the officer-to-counselor ratios. "It reflects an approach to school discipline and school safety that is ultimately counterproductive."

School counselors' roles vary depending on where they work, but often focus on helping students deal with academic, behavior, and social issues. High school counselors play a key role in helping students get into college.

There has been increased attention in recent years to the idea that schools contribute to overincarceration, particularly among students of color. Viralvideos of police officers assaulting students in schools has brought anger and outrage over cops using excessive force in classrooms.

Parker said that adding security to schools has led to some normal school infractions, like dress code violations, being handled by law enforcement rather than school staff. That can result in a student being arrested and having to appear in court.

Many school security officers receive minimal or inadequate training, particularly in dealing with special education students. As previously reported by The 74, the majority of states have no specific laws mandating that officers deployed to classrooms receive special training in dealing with children.

Join us for a literacy celebration! In partnership with First Book, Citibank and The Black Star Project, students will have fun reading aloud and walk away with their own personal library! Two brand new books will be given to each student courtesy of First Book, and several gently used books will be available for free for each student!

Anyone who wishes to donate their gently used children's books to this event can call 773.285.9600 or drop them off to The Black Star Project at 3509 South King Drive, Chicago, Illinois, on any week day, between between 9:00 am and 5:00 pm, by Thursday, April 14, 2016.

This is an RSVP event. You must sign up to attend. Please do not attend this event if you have not RSVP'd and have gotten a confirmation number. This event is for 1st-grade to 6th-grade students! Please call us at 773-285-9600 to register your students and children for this event.

United States is 24th in Reading

and 36th in Math in 2012 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Rankings and Going Lower

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Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests: Top 40 for math and reading

The OECD's Pisa rankings compare the test results of 15 year olds in countries and regional education systems.

The latest results, published in 2013 from tests taken in 2012, showed that the highest performers were in Asian countries.

In recent years, a few early childhood advocates have blasted the Common Core State Standards for their "harmful" effects on kindergarteners, particularly in reading. While a careful examination of the standards reveals this claim to be overstated-and overheated-the notion that we are killing kindergarten was gaining traction long before Common Core came onto the scene.

Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, researchers compared survey response data from public school kindergarten teachers in 1998 and 2010 to investigate changes across five dimensions: teachers' beliefs about school readiness, curricular focus and use of time, classroom materials, pedagogical approach, and assessment practices.

Overall, researchers found that kindergarten has indeed become more like first grade. When asked to rate the importance of thirteen school readiness skills, 2010 teachers tended to rate all of them as more important than their 1998 counterparts had. This was true for academic skills (identifying letters, counting to twenty) and non-academic ones (being "sensitive to others' feelings," problem solving).

The most striking change in beliefs was related to reading: only 31 percent of 1998 teachers believed that children should learn to read in kindergarten; by 2010, that figure had risen to 80 percent. In short, teachers expect more from kindergarteners than they did in the 1990s-not necessarily a bad thing, given that their expectations have an enormous influence on student behavior and achievement.

However, the findings also point to an unfortunate narrowing in curriculum. Namely, the percentage of those teaching daily music and art went down (by eighteen and sixteen percentage points, respectively). It's not that music or art disappeared altogether; they just happened less often.

Schools serving more low-income and non-white children were more likely to use didactic instruction and less likely to provide hands-on learning opportunities. Yet low-income students, again, are more likely to receive poorly structured pedagogy and get shortchanged.

Today's kindergarten classrooms are increasingly rigorous, meaning that youngsters who come to school unprepared are at an even greater disadvantage than in the past. The study reminds us of the importance of high-quality, targeted preschool, as well as teacher policies that ensure that kindergarten students-especially those with skills deficiencies-don't get short shrift.

Men and Women, Do You Want to Earn $42 Per Hour? Do You Want A Career with a Long, Positive Future? Are You Willing to Work Hard and to Learn? Do You Want Wonderful Benefits?

If So, Call The Black Star Project to

Become A Chicago-Area

Electrician

You must be interviewed, have a valid driver's license, be drugfree, have proof of citizenship, have a social security card, be at least 17 years old, pass a basic skills and academic test, be in good physical shape, clear a background check, and a have a letter of recommendation. Limited slots available for a April 2016 internship opportunities.